Reviewed by Sandra Hall

U2's The Edge puts his trust in technology. The White Stripes's Jack White is inspired by the old delta blues players, while Led Zeppelin's virtuoso Jimmy Page sees his guitar as an extension of his personality - or, more particularly, his love life. He uses the old rock'n'roll analogy that the guitar is like a woman he never tires of caressing.

These three met for the first time in January last year in Los Angeles. The Hollywood producer Thomas Tull, who has helped to finance a chain of blockbusters, came up with the idea. A longstanding fan of electric guitar music, he thought it would be interesting to bring together three such contrasting masters of the art and record what happened. Davis Guggenheim ( An Inconvenient Truth) was hired to direct the film and, using the meeting as his centrepiece, he's woven a musical patchwork that spans 50 years of rock history. It's inevitable that the three will end up playing together but while waiting for the moment, you learn a lot about the way their music is made. For once a film's tagline strikes the right note. This one reads: ''It might not affect the way you play guitar, but it will change how you listen.''

We're introduced to the film's stars while they're still en route. White, 34, is driving from his farmhouse in Tennessee, wearing his usual outfit of black pork pie hat, tie and braces. He looks as if he could be travelling the Old West peddling a superior brand of snake oil .

Reviewer rating

Rating:

Rating: out of 5 stars

Title

It Might Get Loud

Genre

Documentary, Music

Director

Davis Guggenheim

Screenwriter

Actors

OFLC rating

PG

Run Time

98 mins

Year

Language

Synposis

General release

Full synopsis

The Edge, 48, looks more like a well-dressed motor mechanic. He flies in from his studio on the coast of Ireland. Page, 65 and dandyish in Edwardian frock coat and stovepipe trousers, comes from his home in London.

Since we're dealing with rock stars, there is no shortage of archival footage. It's possible to see how they looked at every stage in their careers and, naturally enough, no one can match Page in the transformation department. We even see him making music as a 12-year-old when Lonnie Donegan's hit, Rock Island Line, was No.1 and skiffle was the only guitar music British pop fans wanted to hear. Page persevered, eventually becoming a session musician and doing a bit of everything, including film music - he can be heard on the Goldfinger theme. That lasted until he found himself playing Muzak and called it quits. By then he was on his way to rock stardom as a member of the Yardbirds.

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The Edge and White were also schoolboy musicians. The U2 boys were 17 when they got together at their school in Dublin and they just kept on playing, while White remembers cramming his bedroom with so much sound equipment that he had no space for a bed.

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In between reminiscences, we spend more time with them at home. In his Tennessee farmhouse White plays piano and composes a song while instructing a young actor dressed as his nine-year-old self in the workings of the guitar. The Edge takes us on to the beach in front of his studio. Finally, we fetch up at Page's London house, where he goes through his CD collection, blissfully playing air guitar to a particular favourite, Link Wray's Rumble.

They're all at their most open and relaxed when elaborating on the tools which were crucial to them in finding their styles. Page remembers how he felt when he discovered what could be done with the distortion pedal. White talks about his innovation, a retractable harmonica microphone built into his guitar. And The Edge shows just how much his computer and battery of effects machines mean to him by gamely turning them all off and showing how tame he can sound without them.

He does display a touch of unconscious hubris when he's recalling U2's contempt for the self-indulgence of rock stars with illusions of godliness. Spinal Tap was so close to the truth, he says, that it made him weep - which sounds fine until we cut to one of U2's concerts with Bono strutting across the stage before a crowd so massive that it no longer seems human.

But all trace of ego vanishes once they start to play together. The song they choose is the Led Zeppelin tune In My Time of Dying - a sentiment totally at odds with the spirit lighting up the screen.